"WHAT??? You’re not publicizing my book?"

by Maralys Wills

For those who haven't noticed, book publishing ain't what it used to be!

There was a day, back in your grandmother's time, when authors wrote books and conventional publishers did all the rest. In pre-publication meetings, their publicists touted your book to the book buyers and distributors, they ran ads in newspapers, they arranged lavish pub-date parties for their star authors, they ran radio ads and sometimes sent authors to special "coming out" events. Their top authors were treated like movie stars. But even lesser authors enjoyed vigorous sales efforts by in-house publicists. The author had to do very little except show up when necessary.

All that changed about thirty years ago. In 1980, with the advent of my first book, "Manbirds: Hang Gliders & Hang Gliding," I was told that, temporarily, Prentice-Hall had no publicist. Suddenly it became obvious that I'd pretty much have to sell the book myself. Fortunately, because we had two hang gliding champions in the family, the hang gliding community was eager to buy copies. But sales never veered far beyond this small community, so I never received any royalties. In the end, Prentice-Hall remaindered the last 1000 books to me, and slowly, slowly, I sold them all myself.

I thought the Prentice-Hall situation was unusual.

It wasn't. By 1980, limited-to-no intense in-house publicity became the norm for small conventional publishers. Editors described what they did: "We threw the book against the wall and waited to see what stuck."

Increasingly, the large publishers wouldn't even buy a book from anyone who didn't have a "platform", meaning he fell into one of the following categories:

1. Had a national syndicated column: Art Buchwald.
2. Enjoyed a world-wide reputation: Bill Clinton.
3. Chaired a group of over 10,000 people, all pledged to buy the book: CEO, Chrysler Corporation.
4. Landed on the New York Times Best Seller list with prior book.
5. Wrote prior books that garnered sales of 20,000 or more.
6. Won the Pulitzer Prize.
7. Wrote a book (miraculously), that promised to be the next "Harry Potter."
8. Slept with the Governor of New York.

An author hoping to be published by a large house can only hope fervently she falls into category 7 . . . or 8 if she's really desperate.

There seems to be a rule-of-thumb about publicity money from large publishing houses. The less the author needs it, the more she's apt to get.

Small conventional publishers take the rest of us-the skilled writers with smaller platforms, maybe the size of a surfboard. But they still expect the author to do most of the work selling her book. They expect the author to be attractive, verbal, energetic, persistent, and gutsy.

After 21 years of teaching aspiring writers, I can honestly say that the only small-platform writers who can write books without doing much selling are those who produce books for established lines, like Romance. Those are the lucky ones-with minimal effort, their books sell about like all the books in the line.

Which brings me to self-publishing. Now that the work of selling books is pretty much up to the writers, the lines between conventional and self-published books have become blurred-meaning the playing field is finally leveled. If you're going to sell your own books anyway, and you can afford to pay for publishing, why not go that route and get ALL the money? For my book, "A Circus Without Elephants," I paid a lot of money for 5000 copies. With 81 speeches in 27 cities, I've repaid myself two-thirds of my original investment. And I still have about half the books left to sell.

As a matter of pride, I suppose most of us would prefer to be published by a conventional house. But when it comes to the work of "selling," you'll have to do that either way. And if you're a fantastic hustler, you might as well be self-published and earn all the pennies yourself.

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